What Is Culture? What Business Does Culture Have With Leadership?

What is culture? How would you define culture? What is the correct definition of culture?

Those are different versions of the same question I get asked often. I will give you a simple definition of culture. But, more importantly, I will show you how the culture of an organization can affect it positively or negatively.

Now back to the question. What is culture?

Simply put . . . culture is the pattern of behaviour of a group of people living or working in a community.

Your city is a community and you have a predominant culture there. For example, people speak of the . . .

American culture

African culture

African American culture

In the same vein, the organization is a community. This business community has a culture or set of behaviours that are predominant in the community. We speak of this culture as the business culture or company culture.

The organization's culture is mostly influenced by the culture of the leadership of the organization. And the culture can either be bad culture or good culture.

For example, in some organizations . . .

1. In some organizations, the CEO's word is law. The CEO does not entertain contrary views. In that kind of organization, the culture is follow the leader. Whatever the CEO says is right. And this culture slowly creeps down the entire organization. The result? Leaders at every level of the organization become dictators.

2. In some other organizations, the culture is talk the talk - the leaders just talk but don't keep their promises. They talk the talk instead of "walking the talk". The result? A feeling of distrust pervades the organization leading to repeated conflict between management and staff because of many unfulfilled promises.

Make no mistake about it. The culture you promote can grow your company's profitability and competitiveness or destroy it. The culture of your organization, promoted tacitly or actively, can make or break the organization.